A red overlay white glass snuff bottle

Yangzhou School, 19th century

the pear-shaped bottle carved in low relief through the translucent coral-red overlay to the opaque white glass with a boy watching two goldfish in a basin below the characters yi zi sun, the reverse carved with a dog and a bird in flight below a blossoming flower branch and a seal of the artist, carnelian stopper

height 5.6 cm without stopper

Provenance: from a Dutch private collection acquired prior to the 1980’s

Goldfish in a container can be associated with the saying ‘May your household be filled with gold and jade’ (jinyu mantang). This combined with the inscription on this bottle, which may be translated as ‘Suitable for my Sons and Grandsons’, indicates that this snuff bottle may have been a gift from a parent to his or her son.